A dark silhouette against a backdrop of red haze, dwarfed thousands of times by rising black monoliths ascending into the redness, fading before their tops could be seen. Feet clatter against the ground echoing thousands of times over and outward, never fading, but seeming to vanish into the haze as it is bounced repeatedly of the towering metal structures.

The metal monoliths are geometrical, made in almost perfect rectangles with sharp cutting edges.

They don't look natural, though mother nature has been known to make stranger things.

Their size is shocking, towering many thousands of feet into the air, taller than skyscrapers, almost never ending, and packed together like a forest, or it would seem that way.

It is hard to gage distance in such a space. The towering walls and the pulsing red fog give the impression of being confined indoors: claustrophobic and pressing, though the monoliths don't seem to move as the silhouette makes its way towards them.

It walks for many minutes, its feet echoing a thousand times in space.

The monoliths seem to be a mile apart in some places though their daunting size and oppressive shadow still gives the impression that they are close, towering over and staring down at the wandering figure in the shadowy gloom.

More smoke rolls in, giving a strange greenish haze toone of the towers, and a blue haze to another.

The walking of the feet continue to echo upwards and outwards, for miles and miles.

It would be nearly impossible to sneak up on someone in this place.

A deep moaning seems to permeate the air, the creaking of metal as it shifts back and forth in the wind.

It is a sound of abandonment.

It is a sound of loneliness.

A shrill screeching sound rises up through the mist and then fads back down again.

Fingernails on chalk, or metal on metal.

All to be taken back over by the distant moaning.

The Shining illumination of the star is barely visible through the dim haze. On occasions the mists part just enough to allow a stuttering beam of light to pass through, and roll over the ground again before disappearing.

Despite the noise.

The place is lonely, and desolate.

Footsteps continue to echo.

"Admiral, do you copy." The voice inside his helmet seems distant and warped despite its objective clearness.

Little white lights inside his helmet reflect over his skin, while his headlamp attempts to cut through the fog, though it is like trying to cut through soup. Instead of a clean beam of light, there is simply a great halo of white light that illuminates the darkness around him, being of more hindrance than help in some cases.

He turners it off, finding it easier to see.

A wave of distant light passes down through the fog and caresses across the metal ground before fading.

Ground, or floor.

What is the difference.

Ground seems... more natural while the floor sticks out to him as being man made, though that is probably down to simple semantics.

His brain keeps wanting to call it a floor though, and the implications of that thought sends a shiver down his spine.

"Admiral, do you copy-"

The voice seems nervous and impatient, and he swears he can hear a warbling echo behind the words, though he knows it is just his nervous mind talking, conjuring ghosts in the darkness.

"I read you loud and clear, Omen."

Simon sighs in relief and exasperation. SHe is in control of the ship while he is gone. He thinks it is good for her, though he knows other people are skeptical of her ability to lead.

Sometimes she has a habit of sticking to closely to the rules.

"I don't see why you insisted on doing this yourself. It isn't your job, and someone else could have easily done it."

Not this argument again.

"Simon, I told you before, the day I stop doing field work is the day I shoot myself out the airlock. If anyone is going to go out here into dangerous situations, I would rather it be me than some member of my crew, and furthermore, there are plenty of people on the ship as capable, or maybe even MORE capable than me, at commanding, so stow the argument for the time being."

His tirade is cut off as another deep echoing moan rolls up through his feet and rattles through his suit.

"Admiral, are you still there."

Ah, one of the science Nerds.

"Yeah, still here. What can you make of the noise?"

'Hard to tell, there are too many echoes and too much interference from the fog."

"Can you tell what it is."

"CO2 mostly, and we can't identify the components in the smoke either. WHatever it is, it is all over the planet in a low concentration, but where you are it is VERY high. How about you, any luck getting closer to those monoliths."

He looked upwards, at the dark and towering structure just visible as a silhouette through the mist, "Yeah, almost there. I thought I parked a bit closer, but this palace is so big it is messing with my sense of.... Space." He could hear the slow rush of his own breathing inside the helmet, "Any luck on that video feed." he wondered.'

"It's patchy as is the sound. We think you are close to some sort of magnetic interference, that is messing with your equipment."

He toggled the heads up display inside his helmet and took a look at the atmospheric readings.

It is still detecting mostly C02, and a tiny bit of oxygen, though not nearly enough to sustain human life.

Other readings are coming up as well, mostly though, they indicated high presences of other unknown compounds – likely whatever is making the smoke different colors.

There is absolutely no moisture here with a humidity at zero and a temperature that plunges dangerously low, to the point that this place would have been a tundra if there is any water to freeze. He supposed all of that added to the thundering echo that came up every time his feet hit the ground.

The air is thick here, and it is easier for sound to travel.

"This is quite extraordinary." one of the scientists sats, "The geometric structures on the monoliths alone are.... well , incredible. Would it be too presumptive to guess that these are leftover from some sort of advanced alien civilisation."

There is a grunt on the other end of the line, "Lets not get carried away with ourselves just yet."

Adam grunts in agreement, "As cool as it would be to find the ruins of some ancient xeno civilisation, we can't rule out that there are just some really strange natural formations.

"Out of all the people here who wouldn't immediately jump to ancient alien civilisation, my guess never would have been you, Admiral.

He lets out a short blast of air from his nose, "Yeah, I guess it is a bit out of character, but this place.... Well it seems strange and wrong. Has me kind of on edge."

Another slow beam of light passes before him, like the rolling eye of a searchlight.

The thought makes him even more paranoid, giving him the feeling like he is being searched for or watched.

This is all going too slowly for his taste.

He toggles another link on his head up display and kicks the bottom of his boots to life.

The personal gravity generators whirr into being, and he feels himself float slightly off the floor.

He wobbles a bit before regaining his balance.

He kicks lightly at the round to send him floating forward across the floor. He continues to do this for some minutes, speeding up and heading even faster towards the monoliths.

The blackness grows deeper in his vision, until the haze is all but gone and he is looking up at one of the massive structures. It is so tall, he has to crane his head all the way back to even imagine seeing the top. It is very distant and obscured mostly by the red rolling fog, but, on occasion, a beam of light cuts through and he thinks he can see the top.

"Hos is my camera?" He asks, reaching forward with tentative fingers to press against the wall.

"Much better, admiral, what is the suit telling you."

He glances at the readout on his helmet which is still doing an analysis, "I can't really tell what it is, it looks like metal to me though it isn't shiny. When I press on it It doesn't give."

He curls his other hand into a ball and raps on the side of the monolith hard with his knuckles.

A clattering echo rolls out and upwards before vanishing into the fog.

He waits a few seconds hearing the distant echo as it is rattled back to him, "It feels and sounds like metal."

A groaning sound rises up in the mist, haunting, like the moan of some gigantic beast. The sound sets his hair on edge, and he can feel it prickling on the back of his neck.

He knows it is probably an inorganic sound, but somehow it still puts him on edge.

He keeps glancing over his shoulder into the rolling fog, watching as beams of light pass over the ground in great rolling waves.

"Take a sample if you can."

"Copy."

He lets the radio go silent and turns over his right arm, popping a catch on his forearm that contains a small collection of scientific tools. He extracts a small drill bit and places it against the wall unholstering the sample gun from his right hip. His breath is loud in his own ears.

He places the tip of the bit directly against the metal face and pulls the trigger.

The sound that follows is absolutely horrifying.

The squeal of metal on metal roared upwards and outwards causing a rising shriek to echo about the chamber only to be repeated back a thousand times. He panics and lets the drill go silent wincing as he listens to the echoes roll back at him from across the vast and immeasurable space.

The way it echoes reminds him of the inside of a cathedral or temple: a palace where one is supposed to keep silent and reverent. He feels the same way here as if his mere presence and the sound he brings distrubed some sort of hallowed silence.

It feels wrong.

And he feels wrong for being here, knowing that no human steps had ever marred this hallowed place.

He is unwelcome.

He turns his head back to the wall as the echoes fade and rests his hand against the metal confused at first until he realises..... There is nothing there. He pulls back in surprise and looks down at the drill head which is also unmarked.

It's a diamond drill bit, so it should have at least chipped something off.

"Admiral?"

"Yeah, I don't know what this stuff is, but I couldn't even put a dent in it. I am going to try to find somewhere else, maybe where it isn't so thick, like a corner or something."

"Alright, admiral we have to warn you that we are sensing some sort of atmospheric shift, which is going to make the fog even worse for you, perhaps we should pull back so the radios-"

"No, it's alright. I have the tracking implant, so just keep an eye on that. If, for any reason you don't have me on the line and I am in trouble, I will run in a zigzag pattern or some shit."

They seem skeptical, but don't argue with him. He is the Admiral after all.

He turns to the side and activates the gravity fields on his shoes again sliding silently through the mist while keeping to the side of the wall. He can feel how it towers oppressively overhead.

The scientists are right, the fog does seem to be getting thicker, mostly its a sort of hellish red, but there are spots where it seem to glow sapphire or emerald, not in the pretty way of the jewels mind you but dark and greasy like dye poured into a muddy river.

As the wind picks up, the distant moaning increases.

The sound brings up feelings of abandoned factories at night, with the shrieking and hissing metal cracking and popping at the joints as the wind pushes against it. Luckily he is no longer making any sound, and that makes him feel a little better. For some reason he doesn't want to be noticed.

The scientists said there was no indication of organic life on this planet.

They never said anything about inorganic life.

He shakes himself to rid his mind of the stupid thought. That was just ridiculous, and what did it even mean. Did he expect Megatron to pop out from behind one of these monoliths and yell boo.

Maye they were right.

Maybe he did watch too many sci fi movies.

The fog continues to roll in until it seems there is nothing left but a vast wasteland of red smoke, and the towering wall to his side.

He must have been going for many minutes, and only realises that he has reached the corner when the shadow passes away behind him, and he is left standing in a haze of red. He backpedals quickly until he is standing in the shadow once more and takes a deep breath. He turns to the wall, to where the corner is.

He does not want to try again, but he can't lie to the scientists, and redraws his drill placing the diamond edge right against the corner. The grinding noise is even more painful this time, a screeching howellike the lamenting of some ugly terrifying monster with metal joints.

He pulls away and shuts off the drill.

He can already see that it is no use.

He holsters the drill and quickly slides around the corner. He cannot shake the feeling of being watched, normally he would just try to ignore such a sensation, but Krill: logical straightforward scientific Krill seemed to think that there was some truth behind all of it, and, somehow, it made him feel uneasy.

He had made it a good ten minutes around the corner, deciding to pass over to another cluster of monoliths looking smaller than the first grouping had. Hopefully he would find something more promising.

He tries using his radio, but there seems to be no signal. All he could hear was the rushing static.

For a few disconcerting minutes, he finds himself wandering through a red abyss. Nothing but red above him, red around him, and the dark black ofthe metal below his feet. It doesn't feel real, but at the same time, It doesn't feel like a dream. After about fifteen minutes of steady movement, he feels the beginning of burgeoning panic.

Is he going to be stuck in this abyss forever?

No! He can't think like that. He is going to be ok, it is just the quiet that is bothering him so much.

He thinks about turning on his music, but decides against it. Somehow, even that feels wrong.

He just needs a bit of stimulation.

So he starts humming to himself.

After a while the hummed tones of the imperial march disassemble and morph into nothing more than a stilted discordant melody made up of nothing more than stitched harmonies and the occasional off key note."

It doesn't help him to relax.

Over the sound of his hustling, a distant sort of ringing echoes through the fog. He can't describe the sound, much less pinpoint where it is coming from. He keeps going in a single direction, afraid of getting turned around in the endless abyss.

Another sound assails him just as he is reaching the center of the divide.

This is hard to describe too, but sends a wave of shivers down his spine.

Like someone turned up the base on a massive speaker, and then decided to play a single note. It vibrates the ground and causes his teeth to chatter inside his head.

He stops, floating above the ground for a few seconds as the noise continues.

A wave of light cuts past him to the right, and he turns to follow it, witnessing, just in time, as the curtain of red haze parts, and he is given his first unobstructed view of his surroundings.

He freezes on the spot eyes wide.

He stands in an open space between two long lines of monoliths as if he were standing in the middle of a city street which continues on before it curves over the horizon. The massive black monoliths aren't perfectly uniform, some large and some squat, some thin and some quite large.

Those don't surprise him.

Not as much as the ones that are floating.

He takes a step back and nearly loses his balance staring wide eyed at the scene laid out before him.

Massive black towers hundreds of feet tall, suspended above him and to the sides. Now he understands where the light is coming from, the light and the interference.

It comes from the moving of the floating monoliths.

Even as he watches,one of them passes slightly to the side allowing a beam of light to cut past it and down to the ground, skimming over the space before him before vanishing again as the monolith rocks back into place. The swirling mist is pushed and tugged by the large shapes undulating over the ground and occasionally being sucked into areas of lower pressure being caused by the moving of the monoliths.

This explained the radio interference.

He has no idea how those things manage to stay in place, at least until he notices the massie black cables acting as a tether for the massive structures.

These formations can't be natural.

There's no way.... It...

It can't

Their scans showed that there were no more lifeforms here.... unless ... it was abandoned.

It does LOOK pretty abandoned to him.

He tries once more to contact the ship, but still gets no signal. He tries to rout it back to his shuttle, and the signal boost is a bit better. He isn't receiving anything, but maybe he can get something out.

"Omen this is Admiral Vir. I have come across something strange that makes me think this palace.... Is not.... A natural formation. I see floating monoliths and wires, or cords that seem to be holding them in a palace. I think it might be magnetic which explains why our coms aren't working so well, or maybe it's something else.

I am going to take a look further in, but send a group of marines into orbit, and have them head down if something goes wrong. Warning that the monoliths move, so I don't know how close they will be able to get. Keep in orbit, but don't come down.... I don't trust this place.."

Now that he can see, if only partially, he moves faster through the mist, pushing himself along over the ground in swift sweeping motions. Little rims of light glow from the bottom of his boot and over the ground as he moves. He can go faster now that he can see where he is going, and he makes quick time as he sweeps towards one of the structures.

They are smaller here, and he feels like they would be more easily handled.

He is quick moving towards them, and disengages his gravity fields as he gets closer, dropping to the ground with a thud that echoes up and down the massive block.

Overhead one of the monoliths groans, and he looks up.

HE knows where the sound was coming from now, watching as two of the shapes scrape past each other shedding sparks.

The sound is horrendous, but it is soon gone.

He cuts into one of the side alleys, the echoes of his feet a bit closer now, bouncing back to him from one of the walls.

He is walking down another nondescript thorofare when another echo reaches him.

An echo that makes his blood run cold and his bones turn to glass.

A whisper that seems to echo from everywhere and nowhere at once.

Deus.